this is frankly really scary. if you’re in a socialist org, please make sure that they’re not so lax with security like this. also, why the actual fuck are they using google products. we are fucking doomed here in the west man. To be clear I think this is probably more on the local chapter of your org than the national org, but even then I really think national orgs need to be giving out a lot more training about this kind of thing, and quite frankly booting out the leadership of local chapters if they’re lax like this.
tweet text here
PSL security culture: I left almost a year ago, their members locally know I don’t like them, but I’m still in some shared folder where I can see sensitive event and recruiting information
I highly recommend to the people joining orgs to take serious steps and ask questions around security. What if this got into the wrong hands? Out of courtesy I’m censoring the names. I have plenty more screenshots of events in case they try to refute this but I recommend they just hold this L quietly
*4 images showing proof
I think they need us terminally online selfhoster Linux tankies to help them in this regard
You could reach out to a local chapter or something and offer to help them
I can confirm they will appreciate it, listen to your ideas, suggestions, and concerns, and find ways for you to contribute or consider/accept your offers to do projects for them. I’m a member of PSL and serve as their IT. I want to encourage IT comrades to join. We need all the help we can get. You can make a difference; it’s a workers’ democratic party after all.
You seem to be joking, but this is a seriously good idea. Technologically literate people are needed in orgs. Get on it comrade <3
I’ve tried helping local organizers with this and the onus is always on me to put in tremendous effort into explaining why it’s a big deal. Like I need to impart half an IT degree as well as an abridged history of cointelpro. People generally just don’t understand enough to put in the effort and likely add friction to their workflows.
The local socialist org where I live collaborates on Google docs. It’s cringe.
I don’t know. You can waste a lot of effort on convincing people of the need for security, establishing significant security, not weirding people out in the process, and actually sticking to it, only to find out that it’s not as good as you think/it’s yet another program with some sketchy back door built in. Or you do everything right and there’s a fed in your group in person, a tactic they’ve used for at least a century. Or there isn’t, but a serious adversary can piece together who’s in the group and when you’re meeting based on public posts and phone data.
This isn’t saying orgs should take zero steps on information security, more that you’re never going to be able to hide a domestic political group from the U.S. government. Expect leaks and wreckers from the start and you can set up ways to minimize their harm.
copying a comment i made further down:
I understand that people use the google stuff because of how easy it is. Obviously the most sensitive stuff should be kept person to person and not put on the computer, but even with less sensitive information i think we should be doing better than potentially offering up all that info to the feds for essentially free, make them commit resources to infiltrate our groups, not just work with google real quick to get access to whatever they need. Even if our solutions are somewhat clunky, we should 100% be willing to put the time/resources into training people to be tech literate enough to use them. My point here is that we shouldn’t be making it as easy as possible for feds to infiltrate, make them expend more resources by trying to turn informants or even having to insert actual agents
Definitely, I was in PCUSA for a few months and they acted like feds. I’m almost worried what my info could be done with by them.
Could you elaborate on the PCUSA’s behavior? I am not organized with them, but I am with the PSL. I’m just curious about the PCUSA
They’re undialectical patsocs with lots of members with info on their lists and many fewer actually participating in their zoom things (which is all they do besides support reactionary platforms against Ukraine). No one responded to my emails that I was leaving. In the interview they said I would never have to worry about feds in the org. Any serious communist party would be aware of cointelpro. The leadership is rather controlling and they constantly attack people to the left of them. Idk how much of this is fed shit or just bad organizing. If you’re interested in more dirt I’ve elaborated before and you could look it up on my profile on lemmy search.
Edit: doesn’t mean much, but they used signal.
Legitimately wondering, if not Signal what should serious activists be using? Not trying to be combative, but I’ve heard this talking point before in more reactionary parts of the net about the CIA “funding” Signal via the OTF - which tangentially, if you look at the rest of the projects OTF supports, it’s basically every moderately-sized privacy or encryption related open source project in existence… so I’m not really convinced that is necessarily a red flag, and if it is then we’re already really screwed. But then these same people typically just go on using something like Telegram which is… definitely not better. lol
It is hard enough to convince most people to use Signal which has relatively good adoption and name recognition, so it puts privacy conscious people in an awkward position when we have to almost every 6 months say to our contacts, “hey bro so please try out this new shiny chat app bro, it’s actually really secure this time I promise bro. please bro”
Actually it does mean a lot. Signal is literally funded by the CIA. https://dessalines.github.io/essays/why_not_signal.html
